


Doubt, and its Shadow

by cobblepologist



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Dinner, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Massage, Miscommunication, Obsession, Reconciliation, Suspicions, Trauma, for now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 16:31:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15644610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobblepologist/pseuds/cobblepologist
Summary: So he cries, he pleads. He thinks of his mother and the old world and his father and the new home and how he can not lose one thing more. To take one more brick from him would topple down the wall, everything he's built for himself. An empire of deprivation.Post-S4. Oswald worries that Edward will hurt him again.





	Doubt, and its Shadow

"He'll hurt you. He did before. He hurt me." Lee Thompkins, patron saint of dead doctors, of irony, is standing in front of his desk. Arms crossed, the picture of controlled fury.

Oswald's own control is better. He shows nothing, no mercy, grip on his cane steady. "I am aware. He also betrayed me for you, if you recall. He's done the same many times before. I am hoping he's a changed man."

"How can you keep your trust in a man who doesn't even trust himself?" Her eyes soften. She looks past his cold gaze and his suit and to the interior. Oswald knows what she is thinking: The medical miracle. This man's heart should've broken in two. Look how he survives.

"I must confess, I do not know," he says flatly. "But I want him, just as he needs me. In time, I hope that will be enough."

She tightens her lips. There is no battle to win, not for her. "I was just trying to help." She turns to leave. She is missing some of her insides. You can tell if you look hard enough. "I hope you know what you're doing. Goodbye, Oswald."

He watches her walk out and sees the death in her gait. The decay in her step. He knows that Edward Nygma is capable of terrible things. He likes to think he's capable of love, too.

When he starts to think too seriously about Lee's words, he turns his chair around, looks out the window. The new Iceberg Lounge gifted him with such a wonderful view, even if the city itself was in shambles. He can see pinpricks of red, trashcan fires, and the faint outline of banners hung by the Sirens, moving like ghosts in the night wind.

The city is a wreckage, a sunken ship, but it is his home. He can hardly blame Jeremiah for mistaking transformation for progress. Ed once did the same. One step forward, two steps back.

* * *

Ed is frenzied.

He has been like this since his ressurection, since his make-shift resuscitation. He aches for syntax, divulges unto himself mark after mark. More often than not, Oswald finds him barely clothed, still half-dead, whispering.

He has long loved a zombie.

Somehow, he always manages to snap out of it when Oswald enters. He is always warm, beseeching, gathering him up in hugs.

Truly a butterfly, no longer a caterpillar. Oswald once pinned his wings and puts him on display, iceglass framing what he'd become, the array of emeralds and jades on his wings. Now he lets him fly. A pleasure he was deprived of by birth.

Eventually, Edward manages to manuever him to the couch, suddenly looking so much more put-together. He can never stop smiling in these moments, and Oswald can't either.

He always makes Oswald lie back, brings his foot to his lap to massage every ache and every pain away. He's done this since Oswald first came home complaining of soreness, after a particularly harsh encounter with Fries.

It feels so nice, next to the fire. Despite how difficult it must be for him, Edward always keeps the couch and table and chairs free of books. Maybe he does it hoping Oswald will spend time with him there.

"Lee came to see me today."

"Oh?" Ed asks, still focused on Oswald's knee, hands kneading. "And what did she want?"

"What she always wants. Reason." Oswald says this listlessly, turning his head.

Edward laughs to himself. "She won't find it in Gotham. Did she want something more from you?"

Oswald's eyes go back to Ed, and he smiles. "No, she just said you were _dangerous_ , Eddie. That you could hurt me."

Edward is quiet. Swallows. Focuses. _I already did._ "And what did you say?"

A scoff. "That I could handle it." He shifts to settle further down into the couch.

 _Tell her to fuck off and mind her own business_. "I can't imagine her coming all this way just to say that."

Oswald sighs, a long and drawn exhalation. "Who knows the method to her madness."

 _You know mine wonderful boy pretty boy my boy you know everything I don't know about myself._ He's too loud. Edward ignores him and focuses on Oswald's ankle, pressing hard enough to earn him a suppressed groan. "I certainly don't."

That makes Oswald stare more intently at him while he works away the pain, the knots. Tied by sailors. Tied down. "I would assume you would."

 _Too much to know not enough space I only know what's pertinent like your second favorite flower and the way you like your tea._ "I don't."

* * *

It is like this at night: Oswald's fingers, like spiders, dancing along Edward's jacket sleeve. The failure he experiences trying to breathe, taking in long, stuttering gasps as he sinks farther away from him. His name just an echo.

Like getting shot in reverse.

( _Please don't leave me do I not deserve this will this be ruined too will it sour will it wilt will it spoil?_ )

He can't stop it now, childlike tears, the same feeling of scraping his knee outside his mother's apartment. The clenching in his guts as he falls into the harbor again, and again. He has no water left to give, no more blood to pump.

Parallel mirrors. Recursion. Doomed to repeat "betrayal" and "loss" forever. One step forward, two steps back.

Desperate.

He is miserable and not proud, small, holding at his arm as if this will keep Edward-Riddler-both from walking out again. Leaving.

The pain of separation. Oswald is diseased. Edward is an affliction, a tumor, a gash in his side. A gunshot wound, twice removed. And yet, to stitch himself up would most certainly kill him.

Edward, on the other hand, is a prisoner. A hostage to debt. To be released would mean death. Oswald is just his warden.

So he cries, he pleads. He thinks of his mother and the old world and his father and the new home and how he can not lose one thing more. To take one more brick from him would topple down the wall, everything he's built for himself. An empire of deprivation.

He comes back to life with a vengeance. Clutching at Edward's arm, barely registering the hand on his shoulder, grounding him, or Edward saying, "Oswald? Darling? Can you hear me?"

Oswald is aware now that he has been repeating to himself, to Edward, "don't go." Swaying slightly, rocking, while Edward keeps him safe in both arms, a caged bird.

"Oswald?" Edward's voice is so soft, and he can hear it, because he is so close. "Dearest," he murmurs against the shell of his ear and this shell of a man. "Don't cry... I have you. I'm not going anywhere. Come to bed with me."

Edward's hand on his back steadies him as they make the long ascent up the stairs. It takes him time; he breaks down halfway up, collapses against the bannister into a fit of sobs. And yet, Edward holds him through it, allows this. A kindness.

Climbing the stairs feels like climbing Olympus. Even as Edward supports most of his weight, he feels breakable. He is an antique, an anachronism. Ed is still terribly fond of him regardless, smiles when they reach their floor. Ushers him into their bedroom, to the bed. To rest.

* * *

After the worst night, he does not return. Edward waits patiently, replays it in his head. Eidetic memory. He relives his faults in painful clarity. He had touched Oswald softly, hands anchoring the seasick. He had murmured him praise, something he knew Oswald loved, desired, needed. He had never left his side. There was no difference in technique, no misstep.

The only change in pattern he remembers is Oswald sobbing that Edward could hurt him again. He had tried to assuage him. Had it not been enough? Since then, he hadn't seen Oswald. It had been two and a half days.

He misses him. There is no analogy great enough to describe how much.

So he drags himself to his office. This he hated, being looked at by Oswald's people like this. _They look at us and say "there he is that waste of literature the one that shot him the one he keeps around how can a man that brilliant suffer one so-"_

Edward is the only one permitted to enter Oswald's office at any moment. Two countries under a strange truce. It always astounds him, what decadance can exist in a city in flames. The treasure in the war. Oswald's club is immaculate, a haven, glistening like ice. Even with the constant threat of coming under siege, he has never once felt unsafe.

Oswald is at his desk, of course, huddled over papers and the best laid plans. Edward adjusts his glasses and timidly approaches. "Oswald? Where have you been?"

"Busy." He doesn't look up.

Fidgets, plays with his fingers. "Oh, that's alright. Dearest, I just- Do you need me?" _We need to be needed._

"No. You can go."

"Go?" Edward almost laughs at the absurdity of it. "I beg your pardon?"

"You can go," Oswald repeats. "You can leave. You just owe me a favor."

"You- you want me to leave your office?"

"No. I mean you can leave the lounge." He finally puts his pen down and looks up.

"Leave? Go where?" Something akin to fear, that primal feeling of being hunted, flickers in his eyes. "This is my home, Oswald, I-"

"If you are worried about shelter," he sighs, reaching for a bottle, "I can arrange for someone else to take you, or allocate some of my own resources to providing you with a comfortable enough setup."

"It's not about that. I belong here. With you."

Oswald takes a sip, throat quivering around brandy. Bitterness can be its own kind of subterfuge. "You don't. You don't think that."

Ed exhales. Trembles. "Do you want me to go? Are you tired of me? Did i do something wrong?'

"You owe me a favor." He has nothing left to say.

Maybe Edward pleads, but it's fruitless, barren. Strings of "Oswald, no," and "don't make me." "I need you" and "he needs you" and "we need you." He leaves after a while, glasses stained, rushing off.

* * *

Oswald has sent him to the hounds. He knows that now. Abandoned Ed so he couldn't leave him. He could die again like that.

Maybe Oswald is a victim of drowning. The pier or the alcohol, who can tell cause of death these days? But Edward has nothing. No one but himself and himself.

He sends all of his people out looking for Ed. When they come back empty-handed, he huffs and goes out himself, coat slung over his shoulders.

The first place he looks is the last place he looks.

There is Ed, in some half-demolished building. Of course no one else would find him, would know where to look. It's his old apartment, its skeleton exposed. Surrounded by books and blankets, curled in on himself on a mattress. For a brief, horrific moment, Oswald remembers finding his body, lifelessness seeping from Ed's hand to his. But he sees him shiver, and he rushes to him, even as the floor and his leg both threaten to give out.

Another memory creeps in on him, but he feels like he is watching it from Ed's perspective. Remembers when he was the injured party.

"Edward?" He stirs as Oswald leans down, turns over from his side and onto his back.

He blinks, as if he is hazily recalling his own name, hand reaching up to touch Oswald's cheek. "Os-" He sounds fragile, cut off by a cough. Oswald likes the syllable, nonetheless.

"Don't try to talk," he instructs, but he does not stop himself from smiling. "I've missed you, oh Ed, are you hurt?" Grin replaced with a gasp, with worry.

"I'm okie-dokie." Swallows roughly. Oswald's hand finds its way in his hair. "Could use some water, I think. Maybe some food."

"Of course, anything you want. Let's get you back to the lounge, yes?" Oswald allows his hand to smooth over his shoulder, to his back, helping him to sit up.

"Let me inside," he chokes, a blurry mess.

"Of where, dear?"

"Your head," he bemoans. "Keep me there. Let me see how it works."

"A consummation devoutly to be wished," Oswald laughs. He wraps Edward in his coat. "Come home with me instead."

Edward nods, mute, unaware of anything else but Oswald helping him up. He is sick from the breeze and the hunger. Oswald takes a moment to inspect the streets below from the broken windows.

It is hard to make it back to the Lounge. Delinquents and deviants running amok, and with a high profile- and a distinct one at that- one would think they didn't stand a chance.

But they make it. Both limping, synchronized. Strange and his men take him away from Oswald as soon as he bursts through the door. There is a turmoil, and then, nothing. Like a tornado decimating all in its path. Oswald is left to calculate the destruction alone. He fixes himself a drink and sits on a bar stool. He is glad he closed for the night.

Strange returns eventually. Oswald perks up and hops off, limp exaggerated by pain. "How is he?"

The doctor shrugs. "No worse than you or me. He will he fine."

"I...I want to see him."

Expects resistance and receives none. "Of course."

In some private room, Edward is lying back. Hazy from medication. There are plates of food, half-eaten, all on the tables dotting the room. As if he were sharing. He blinks and smiles when the door opens, when Oswald enters and Strange retreats. "Darling. Light of my life."

"I shouldn'tve asked you to leave." His voice quivers as he stops at the door. He feels even more distant from Ed than before.

He smiles weakly, pats the space next to him on the booth he's sitting in. "Then ask me to stay."

Oswald chews his lip, then nods decisively. He takes his place next to Edward. "I'm sorry."

Edward hums, pulling Oswald close. "It's alright. Law of attraction and all that. But for what it's worth, I missed you. Even if you can be cold, Penguin." Oswald laughs even as he begins to tear up, allows Ed to pour him a glass of wine.

One step back, two steps forward.


End file.
